PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY OF PROPER NAMES AND

TECHNICAL TERMS IN CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT OF NORTH AMERICA.

CHAPTER I.

SPAIN AND AMERICA.

1. Christopher Columbus. In Genoa, Italy, somewhere between 1436 and 1446,' was born Cristoforo Colombo. His name was written Columbus in Latin, which was then the language used by all who read and wrote, and as Christopher Columbus he has been known ever since to English-speaking people. He left school when he was about fourteen, and was sent to sea to finish his education and to learn to command a vessel. Like those seamen of his time, who were more than common hands, he made a careful study of maps and charts, read the stories of travelers, and busied himself with questions as to the shape of the earth and its size.

Learned men had long held the opinion that the world was a globe instead of being flat, as the common people and the more ignorant supposed. Columbus also believed it to be a globe; he thought it, however, not perfectly round, but pearshaped. He thought it, too, much smaller than it really is. By his study of charts and his talks with scholars he decided that if he were to sail due west from the Canary Islands, he would cross about four thousand miles of ocean and reach the eastern shore of Asia. In point of fact, that was not far from the distance to the Gulf of Mexico.

1 The exact date is not known.

2. Why should he wish to go by Sea to Asia? - Nowadays our geographies give us abundant information about Asia; on our maps, every river and mountain range and cape can be traced; we know the cities and provinces and separate nations; and we have books which tell us of the people, their mode of life and what they produce. It was not so in the time of Columbus. Asia was a vast, vague land, at the extreme east of which lay the countries which we now know as China, Japan and the East Indies, while the ocean flowed beyond.1

From these countries caravans came, bringing silk, pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, and spices, and Genoa and other Italian cities grew rich through commerce; for their merchants sent ships to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to trade with the Asiatics who had crossed the continent. But when Columbus was a boy, a great blow had been struck at this

commerce.

The Turks, who before had lived in western Asia, swarmed into Europe and captured the great city of Constanti1453. nople. They controlled now all the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and it became a perilous matter to send ships there. Thus it was of the greatest moment to find, if possible, some new route to the Indies. The Portuguese, under the lead of their prince, Henry the Navigator, had been slowly following the coast of Africa.2

- Columbus him

3. The Struggle of Columbus to get a Hearing. self went to Lisbon about 1470 and for a while carried on his business of map making there and sometimes went to sea with Portuguese captains. He knew therefore of the discoveries

1 The book above all others which gave Columbus and the men of his time their notion of Asia was the famous adventures of Marco Polo, written about 1300. The Old South Leaflet, No. 32, contains Marco Polo's Account of Japan and Java.

2 Prince Henry was filled with zeal for discovery. He built an astronomical observatory in the southernmost province of Portugal and devoted himself to study. From that point he directed a series of voyages from 1418 to 1463, and after his death the work went forward, until in 1497 Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to India.

along the African coast, but he was convinced that there must be a shorter route to Asia, and he was confirmed in this belief by the advice of a great geographer and map maker, Toscanelli, who sent him, in 1474, a map which showed a straight course across the Atlantic.1

It was one thing to believe in such a route; it was quite another to follow it. Map makers could bring forward excellent arguments in support of their belief; but the only argument really convincing was to take a vessel and sail across the ocean. Columbus was a poor man, and he must needs persuade some one who had money to join him. For twenty years he carried his great purpose in his mind before he could bring it to pass. He tried in vain to persuade the magistrates of his native city of Genoa to join him.

He laid his plans before the King of Portugal, who took counsel with learned men about him. These men publicly ridiculed Columbus as a crazy adventurer; but privately they told the king there might be some truth in what Columbus said, and the king was base enough to send out a vessel secretly, to get all the advantage there might be for himself. But it needed a Columbus to carry out the ideas of Columbus. The captain of the vessel sent out by the king put out from the Azores, but meeting a storm, he was frightened and turned back. Columbus heard of what was done and indignantly left Portugal. He bent his energies toward persuading Ferdinand and Isabella,2 King and Queen of Spain, to give him aid, and failing in that, he tried to bring some of the noble families to his side; through his brother Bartholomew he made an equally vain attempt to interest the English court.

4. The Triumph of an Idea. - For seven long years he pushed his great enterprise. Poor, ridiculed as a madman, almost friendless, Columbus clung to his belief; and at last his faith

1 The letters which Toscanelli wrote to Columbus at this time will be found in Fiske's Discovery of America, I. 356–362.

2 The History of Ferdinand and Isabella has been written by W. H. Prescott; it is one of the most readable of American histories.